7 ms·

Firefox will show ads on the new tab page based on browsing history

65 points by jumpwah 11y ago

nodata 11y ago
Bye Firefox. Edit: "We promise to put you first and never sell your personal data. What else do you want for the Web?" -- https://twitter.com/firefox/status/461550580729536512 https://twitter.com/firefox/status/461550580729536512 Don't collect my personal data.
- FooBarWidget 11y ago
  Yeah, time to switch to Google Chrome. It's made by a party that will never collect personal data, certainly not make it their entire core business. Oh wait... Ok, serious mode. For years people have been complaining that Mozilla is too dependent on funding from Google. This is a way for Mozilla to fund itself without depending on Google. But that's not good either? Maybe Mozilla should start nagging people for donations, Wikipedia-style? But that's not good either: lots of people complain about Wikipedia's yearly "begging" and say they would prefer to see ads instead. What would you have them do?
  - ama729 11y ago
    > But that's not good either? Indeed, it's not a binary decision, there are other ways than just sell you user's data. For starter, Google (and now Yahoo) were giving hundreds of millions every year. What did Mozilla do with that?
    - icebraining 11y ago
      Mostly, it funded development: http://venturebeat.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/mozilla_report_2013.png http://venturebeat.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/mozilla_re...
      - ama729 11y ago
        In 2012 they had a surplus of more than $100,000,000 though... And still, $30,000,000 for administrative cost? $45,000,000 for marketing? (never saw any ads for firefox, did you? I have no idea what they spent so much money on)
        FooBarWidget 11y ago
        Maybe you can email them and ask?
        icebraining 11y ago
        Marketing is not just ads. They support a lot of projects like the Stupid Shit No One Needs & Terrible Ideas Hackathon[1], the Gigabit Community Fund[2], the Hive NYC Learning Network[3], and many more, which probably are itemized as marketing. [1] http://stupidhackathon.github.io/ http://stupidhackathon.github.io/ [2] https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/gigabit/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/gigabit/ [3] http://hivenyc.org/ http://hivenyc.org/
        maxerickson 11y ago
        The discussion of those numbers is here: https://static.mozilla.com/moco/en-US/pdf/Mozilla_Audited_Financials_2013.pdf https://static.mozilla.com/moco/en-US/pdf/Mozilla_Audited_Fi... It isn't hugely informative, but I would guess that the $9 million in office leases mentioned towards the end is categorized as an administrative cost.
    - FooBarWidget 11y ago
      What did they do with it? Have you looked at the insane amount of engineering they have done in the past 8 years? Their Javascript engine is among the fastest in the world. An insane amount of money has been pumped into hiring world-class experts to develop it. Not to mention the continuous improvements to their rendering engine, marketing and awareness projects, charity projects to get minorities like kids and women into web development, fighting legal battles against patent encumbered technologies like H264, etc. You are seriously underestimating the amount of money they need.
      - mahouse 11y ago
        > Their Javascript engine is among the fastest in the world. And still easily the slowest.
        epmatsw 11y ago
        Oh really? http://arewefastyet.com/ http://arewefastyet.com/
        mahouse 11y ago
        Yes, really. Benchmarks are fabricated and hardly represent real use cases, such as modifying the DOM.
        fabrice_d 11y ago
        DOM modification performance has next to nothing to do with the performance of the JS engine.
- nautical 11y ago
  Do you have ideas on how else to continue development process ?
- elorant 11y ago
  Well you know the saying. When something is free, you're the product. Personally I don't mind. I love Firefox and the work they've done all these years and if that's the only way to keep them afloat then so be it. I just hope the implementation won't be too intrusive.
  - pserwylo 11y ago
    Not always. If something is free, and it is a commercial company offering it, then you are probably the product. But if the offering is from a not for profit company, a charity, or volunteers building something open source for their enjoyment and to contribute to the community, then you are not the product. As for Mozilla, I'll leave you to make up your mind. I tend to agree with you and I love Mozilla too (but hope that Iceweasel doesn't have this :)
  - hiamnew 11y ago
    There is a whole cosmos of FLOSS software that utterly destroys that argument.
    - FooBarWidget 11y ago
      As an open source developer myself, I say that you are way too optimistic about it. With a few exceptions, open source projects tend to be consistently underfunded. I get the feeling the HN crowd doesn't realize/appreciate/care about this fact. Let's take a look at two contrasting open source projects: Ruby and the V8 Javascript interpreter. Ruby is dog slow in comparison to V8. They both languages are extremely dynamic and present similar optimization challenges. Why? Because Google has enough cash to hire world-class experts to make V8 fing fast. One of the guys behind V8 has 20 years of experience with writing JITs for dynamic languages. The guy practically invited JITs for dynamic languages, and was also one of the main contributors of the Hotspot JVM JIT. In contrast, Ruby does not. I met up with a panel of Ruby core developers a couple of months ago. It became extremely clear that Ruby is underfunded. Ruby has maybe 2 full time paid developers. They are skilled, but are nowhere near as skilled as the V8 guy when it comes to optimizing dynamic languages. They also lack funding for infrastructure projects. Web browsers are one of the most complex pieces of software in human history. Mozilla literally spends millions per year on developing Firefox. Sure, a browser might exist in a completely free, lowly-funded FOSS form. But at what expense? Just look at Ruby vs V8. You can't just hand-wave away the importance of money.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- icebraining 11y ago
  The data is collected in the browser, same as it ever was. The history is not sent to Mozilla's servers - it's the browser that locally chooses and fetches the tiles. The tiles are grouped based on multiple servers, so the fact that your browser requested a specific tile doesn't directly tell them which site you actually visited. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1120311 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1120311
  - nodata 11y ago
    Mozilla has done a disastrous job of communicating this, I hope they post something soon. Their last blog entry is from 18 May: https://blog.mozilla.org/ https://blog.mozilla.org/ Edit: they have a different blog here that mentions it: https://blog.mozilla.org/futurereleases/ https://blog.mozilla.org/futurereleases/
    - AaronMT 11y ago
      Agreed. It’s posted on a /privacy/ section of the blog https://blog.mozilla.org/privacy/ https://blog.mozilla.org/privacy/
  - pdkl95 11y ago
    It just leaks which category of sites I've been visits. Why is it so hard to understand that leaking any bits not necessary for the retrieval and presentation of the link I clicked on is absolutely unacceptable? Anything that sends data that could not be learned form the server logs is spyware and will be treated as such. Some companies like to claim that this spying is necessary because the data is useful. I'm sure it is, just like I'm sure a thief find the goods they stole to be useful. For similar reasons claims - like your explanation of this firefox misfeature - relating to the amount of bits leaked are not actualy a defense.
anilgulecha 11y ago
You can look at it thisway -- Firefox was funding it's own development by off-shoring it's ads to Google/Bing in exchange for funds. Maybe the world becomes better with Mozilla directly serving ads than it's partners. Of course, I'll be going with the adblocked community version which will be released, with or without Mozilla's backing.
kropotkinlives 11y ago
For once, it appears Microsoft are the only browser vendor moving in the right direction and that is scary.
- FooBarWidget 11y ago
  They can afford it because they have lots of cash from Windows and Office sales.
- kibibu 11y ago
  It's happened in the past. I still have positive memories of IE4 - at least compared to the horror of Netscape 4
  - kropotkinlives 11y ago
    Fair point! I'd forgotten about Netscape 4 and eternal Bus Errors on the SPARCstation 20 I had back then :(
- rockdoe 11y ago
  You mean the guys that torpedoed DNT and are sabotaging WebRTC standardization?
vegancap 11y ago
They're a business, just like anyone else. Unless we all start throwing thousands of donations at them, they have to find ways to monetise to keep up the awesome work they do. If it's both relevant and intuitive, then no harm done. Remember, your browsing history isn't exactly a big secret. That's why incognito modes exist in most browsers.
- melicerte 11y ago
  I understand nothing is free and my privacy matters. For that reason, I'm willing to make donations, even on a regular basis, instead of having ads.
  - lmorchard 11y ago
    Great, here you go! https://sendto.mozilla.org https://sendto.mozilla.org
- dannypgh 11y ago
  Firefox isn't a business, it's an open source/free software project. Mozilla is a nonprofit entity which pays some people to work on it. This is an important distinction, no?
  - vegancap 11y ago
    Not particularly, they still have to gain some form of revenue to keep their core ventures. Their revenue in 2012 for example was $311 million.
    - vdaniuk 11y ago
      An organization being for-profit or non-profit is not particularly important distinction? Elaborate please.
      - maxerickson 11y ago
        It's literally just a tax status. Part of that is that no one owns the Mozilla Foundation, but, for example, the people controlling it can still extract money by paying themselves salary. This is how family foundations can be a tax dodge, the huge legacy is dumped into a non profit and grows without incurring much taxes, meanwhile the family has some meetings and draws comfortable salaries for it.
raziel2p 11y ago
The article says Mozilla are "doing a Google" with this, but I can't remember ever seeing this sort of thing in Chrome or Chromium.
romanovcode 11y ago
The problem is that nobody is funding Firefox and they need money to continue development. If any of you "goodbye firefox" have a better idea feel free to speak up. Also, you can leave firefox for google, but it collects way more data anyway. Maybe Microsoft Edge will be good so Windows users can just use default browser.
- TheLogothete 11y ago
  Isn't that integrated with MSN.com?
- bad_user 11y ago
  You're joking, right? Windows now phones home even with your "encryption" keys, Bing search is integrated into the start panel and you're somehow hoping that a still closed source IExplorer will better respect your privacy. My sarcasm detector must be malfunctioning.
ama729 11y ago
Who in their right mind would push such a thing? How can they think it'll will win them any user? I have no words.
- FooBarWidget 11y ago
  This isn't about winning users. It's about not dying. Web browsers are one of the most complicated pieces of software in human history. Skilled developers cost money, lots of money.
  - sfink 11y ago
    I doubt it. I'm guessing this won't bring in significant money for a while at least, and it'll lose users in the short term. Monetizing search, as with the Google now Yahoo deal, is where the money for developers comes from. This only makes sense if the goal is to shake things up. What its chances of success there are, and how positive that outcome would be, is still an unknown in my head. But Mozilla only exists to have an impact on the Web, so it kind of makes sense. (I work for Mozilla, but have no special insight into this initiative.)
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
realusername 11y ago
I had nothing against the sponsoring in the new tab screen but this is a bit different. There is so much potential for backfire if they don't do it properly. But at the end, how is that different from Google who is also putting ads by analyzing your entire web history. The main problem is that it's quite hard to finance their business, they are trying to do new stuff in every direction to depend less on Google (new search partners, Read-it-later, Firefox OS...) but it's not an easy task.
- FooBarWidget 11y ago
  Apparently, it's different from Google by showing ads without selling your personal information. Firefox fetches ads without sharing your history. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1120311 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1120311
  - vdaniuk 11y ago
    Google doesn't sell your personal information, it provides access to your eyeballs.
    - soylentcola 11y ago
      Yeah, I hear this a lot but I've never seen anything that suggests they sell info to any third party. If I'm wrong about this I'm definitely interested in reading about it so I can adjust my stance on it. As far as I can tell, the idea has always been the same: more relevant ads means less ads needed to make the same revenue and cost businesses less in wasted ad budget. The "old method" was to just make your ads more obnoxious and abundant since you could only compete through volume (both in the sense of "loudness" and "quantity"). Now if I open a shop in my city, I can advertise on Google. I tell Google that I want to pay for X ads and to show them to people in my city (potential customers) who have searched for similar items (more likely customers). This way I can minimize the amount of money I spend showing ads to people in other cities/countries or who aren't likely to be interested. Google can charge more for that space because it's more likely to result in a customer. Google makes more money from fewer/less obnoxious ads (no popups, flashy shit, etc). And as a web user, I don't see ads for diapers or restaurants in Wyoming because Google's algorithms have determined that I live in an east coast US city and have never searched for baby stuff. Honestly the only real issue I have with their "big data" is that it might be captured by another organization (business, "hacker", or government) and used in less benign ways than tweaking the ads in my sidebar.
cmdrfred 11y ago
I stopped using firefox about 5 years ago. Adblock + Chrome is the best browser I've ever used.
- mukundmr 11y ago
  That doesn't stop Google from reading your URL history.
  - cmdrfred 11y ago
    I don't particularly care, If I need anonymity i use tor. P.S. Are you so sure Firefox won't be doing any tracking for 'advertising purposes'?
davout 11y ago
Bye FF
Confiks 11y ago
Maybe the more relevant page is Mozilla's own announcement, instead of some random site. See https://blog.mozilla.org/futurereleases/2015/05/21/help-test-changes-to-new-tab-in-firefox-beta/ https://blog.mozilla.org/futurereleases/2015/05/21/help-test... I think Mozilla needs to do a better job explaining why there is "no tracking involved in delivering Tiles". They now just state that, with no information on how it's implemented, and people will get scared if they don't hear specifics. I can imagine this being implemented without tracking, by simply downloading all advertisements and doing the ad selection on the client. The ad may then of course not 'phone home'. They also state that if you have Do Not Track enabled, these new tiles will be disabled "as we believe that most DNT early adopters are seeking to opt out of all advertising experiences". You can also opt out of them by using the cog at the new tab screen. Still, I don't really like this development.
- icebraining 11y ago
  They have information in the Bug Tracker, though it's in a more technical language. A plain version is definitively important. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1120311 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1120311
- thristian 11y ago
  A better blog-post to link to would be https://blog.mozilla.org/advancingcontent/2015/05/21/providing-a-valuable-platform-for-advertisers-content-publishers-and-users/ https://blog.mozilla.org/advancingcontent/2015/05/21/providi... which links to an infographic describing how user privacy is protected: https://blog.mozilla.org/advancingcontent/files/2015/05/How-data-is-protected-Infographic1.pdf https://blog.mozilla.org/advancingcontent/files/2015/05/How-... For people who don't like infographics, there's also a textual description: https://blog.mozilla.org/privacy/2015/05/21/putting-our-data-privacy-principles-into-action/ https://blog.mozilla.org/privacy/2015/05/21/putting-our-data...
  - ama729 11y ago
    From your first link: > This is still one of our early steps towards our goal of improving the state of digital advertising for the Web – delivering greater transparency for advertisers, better, more relevant content experiences and, above all, greater control for Firefox users. At least one would hope they could be honest in their goal, I don't think anybody care about the state of digital advertising except marketers.
RobertoG 11y ago
Are we sure they will be collecting data? You could get personalize advertisements without collecting the data: the browser has your history, it made some kind of profiling (categorize you), and then it request advertisement for your profile.
- rfk 11y ago
  Indeed, the whole point of this (and all the verbiage about "respecting user privacy") is that the browser will do the analysis locally without sending history data back to Mozilla.
impostervt 11y ago
Cached page: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://www.geeksnack.com/2015/05/22/firefox-will-show-ads-based-on-your-browsing-history/ http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...
vdaniuk 11y ago
Good. Non-profits with proven track records such as Mozilla are the only entities I trust to run an ethical ad network. While I care about privacy and have ghostery, ublock and eff privacy badger installed, I'll be making an exception for Mozilla. As usual, I am disappointed with the HN hive-mind myopia regarding web ads, privacy and non-profits efforts to compete. Also, Mozilla is respecting Do Not Track setting of Firefox users: "* Note: if you set DNT=1, it is possible that you may not be receiving Suggested Tiles. You can very simply enable them on the new tab page with the cogwheel. We made the decision to opt users out of all sponsored Tiles experiences if they have DNT=1 quite early on, as we believe that most DNT early adopters are seeking to opt out of all advertising experiences. However, it’s important to understand that no tracking is involved in delivering Tiles."
belorn 11y ago
Couldn't iceweasel just change the default so the ads are not shown? It is free software and they already got experience to do changes to the code in order to change the name and icon.
binarymax 11y ago
I hate ads. I love Mozilla. I understand Mozilla needs the money. I don't mind supporting them with cash. Why not have a freemium option for folks to subscribe to Firefox and hide the ads?
- icebraining 11y ago
  You have. Disable the feature (yes, it's easy to disable) and donate.
  - binarymax 11y ago
    I do donate :) My point is show a message that says 'Subscribe to hide these ads' or something similar. The process you describe is not ideal for most uses who might not even know they can donate. Remove the friction.
    - RobAley 11y ago
      A more trustworth statement would be "Click here to turn these ads off. These ads help support Firefox development, if you would like to support development by donating click here".
- kozukumi 11y ago
  Freemium wouldn't work. There will be unofficial builds available with this kind of stuff removed available for free within hours of the official release. They could charge for services such as sync but again that is going to be difficult Chrome does it for free. I think Mozilla need to seriously look at how they are spending their money as it seems to be pretty insane some of their outgoings. I know they are trying to diverge from just being a browser with things like Firefox OS but we all know that isn't going to ever be a real competitor to iOS and Android. Even in developing nations I think people are more likely to go with a dirt cheap Windows Phone when Windows 10 is out over a Firefox phone. One thing Windows Phone does really well is run great on very low powered devices. I can't ever see Firefox OS getting above 0.x market share. Perhaps Mozilla is just too big now? Do they need to scale back to save money? Can they survive on a donations alone?
kozukumi 11y ago
Sigh. I was worried this would happen. I know Mozilla need to make money and with their market share shrinking that is getting harder but these kind of "features" put me off wanting to use Firefox all together. I would rather use Chromium over a version of Firefox with targeted advertising built in. For now at least it looks like being able to disable it is still possible but I cannot find any mention if disabling this also disables the whole analysing my history bit?
- icebraining 11y ago
  There's no real analysis of your history, it's just selecting the top visited links (using existing code, which is used to show you the current tiles of visited sites).
nnrocks 11y ago
Finally, I got someone who is respecting privacy instead of moneybag.
octatoan 11y ago
I think we need a Firefox Edge similar to what happened with ABP.
mmcru 11y ago
what a terrible change. i've spent the last week developing two firefox addons; now i regret that, because i'll never use a browser with embedded advertising.
- sfink 11y ago
  Ok, then turn off the embedded advertising. Your users are going to continue seeing ads all over the web no matter what browser they use, and in fact will be tracked by advertisers (less so if they take steps to avoid it, but that's up to them.)
learnstats2 11y ago
Is there a project to make a decent browser that doesn't have any intention of making a profit or selling out its users, and has governance appropriate to make that a reality? It seems like this is necessary. If I can contribute to that, pre-existing or not, I will start today. There are 3 billion web users: between us we must have enough altruism and skill to compete with this.
- icebraining 11y ago
  I'm pretty sure the browsers by suckless won't ever show ads; not sure if you consider them decent, though. http://surf.suckless.org/ http://surf.suckless.org/
hsivonen 11y ago
Relevant: http://ed.agadak.net/2015/04/whys-and-hows-of-suggested-tiles http://ed.agadak.net/2015/04/whys-and-hows-of-suggested-tile... Key quote: "to summarize, Firefox makes generic encrypted cookieless requests to get enough data to decide locally in Firefox whether content should be added to the new tab page."
uzero 11y ago
It's not about where the processing happens or what data is actually transmitted, it's about them pulling this type of shit without clearly asking my permission. And it's not an excuse that Google and others are doing similar things. If you try to win users by publicly saying you're "fighting for privacy", you will be held against higher standards. Mozilla failed really badly here and honestly I'm not sure if they can ever win back my trust after this. Even though I've read through the tech docs released and I know it's not like they are sending your history all over, it's the way they decided to do this that undermined all their efforts so far.
- RobAley 11y ago
  Could you be more specific about the particular aspects of the "way they decided to do this" that you are objecting to? As a privacy advocate, I can't see anything particuarly objectionable in their methodology.
oliv__ 11y ago
...and I'm done with Firefox.
lmorchard 11y ago
FWIW, I work at Mozilla, but I don't work on this particular project. But, I care because I <3 the web. What I think a lot of folks are missing here is that this is an attempt to change how ads are done. Whether you like it or not, ads are how most of the web gets funded right now. Yes, funding Mozilla would be nice. Even better would be if ads on the web in general were less intrusive and better respected privacy. One of the things this does not do is send your browsing history to remote servers. Instead, the remote server sends you a pile of ads roughly based on your location & language. The browser decides locally what to show. That's a big change, shifting the bulk of the sensitive stuff to your own computer instead of black boxes in the cloud. This isn't just your usual "slap a banner on it" ad network used in all the free mobile apps. And, if the model works in the browser, it might work on the web too.
- _up 11y ago
  Why not go further and give the money earned with ads in firefox to the user. Who can then use this to directly buy webservices. This could also automaticly be brokered by the browser. This could make webservices a comodity and give back power to the user.
digitalzombie 11y ago
I'm okay with this. I love firefox and was the first few when netscape open Mozilla and I jumped on board and ditch IE5. So far I trust Mozilla more so than Google or Microsoft on browser software.
TheLoneWolfling 11y ago
And FF forks will gain traction, and so the cycle continues. I personally switched over to Pale Moon when the whole UI "update" happened, and it's looking more and more as though I made the right choice.
visarga 11y ago
Bad idea. I hate even the website icons from the new tab page. They sometimes show sites I don't want to advertise (xxx). They make "new tab" work slower and I never feel inclined to click on them. Now they are trying to stuff even more slowness inducing ads in the new tab - that means - exactly the moment you wan to to something ELSE. That's the problem - when you open a tab, you don't really want to see the ads. When you search on Google, you might want to see the ads.

65 points by jumpwah 11y ago

Bye Firefox. Edit: "We promise to put you first and never sell your personal data. What else do you want for the Web?" -- https://twitter.com/firefox/status/461550580729536512 https://twitter.com/firefox/status/461550580729536512 Don't collect my personal data.

FooBarWidget 11y ago
Yeah, time to switch to Google Chrome. It's made by a party that will never collect personal data, certainly not make it their entire core business. Oh wait... Ok, serious mode. For years people have been complaining that Mozilla is too dependent on funding from Google. This is a way for Mozilla to fund itself without depending on Google. But that's not good either? Maybe Mozilla should start nagging people for donations, Wikipedia-style? But that's not good either: lots of people complain about Wikipedia's yearly "begging" and say they would prefer to see ads instead. What would you have them do?
- ama729 11y ago
  > But that's not good either? Indeed, it's not a binary decision, there are other ways than just sell you user's data. For starter, Google (and now Yahoo) were giving hundreds of millions every year. What did Mozilla do with that?
  - icebraining 11y ago
    Mostly, it funded development: http://venturebeat.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/mozilla_report_2013.png http://venturebeat.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/mozilla_re...
    - ama729 11y ago
      In 2012 they had a surplus of more than $100,000,000 though... And still, $30,000,000 for administrative cost? $45,000,000 for marketing? (never saw any ads for firefox, did you? I have no idea what they spent so much money on)
      - FooBarWidget 11y ago
        Maybe you can email them and ask?
      - icebraining 11y ago
        Marketing is not just ads. They support a lot of projects like the Stupid Shit No One Needs & Terrible Ideas Hackathon[1], the Gigabit Community Fund[2], the Hive NYC Learning Network[3], and many more, which probably are itemized as marketing. [1] http://stupidhackathon.github.io/ http://stupidhackathon.github.io/ [2] https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/gigabit/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/gigabit/ [3] http://hivenyc.org/ http://hivenyc.org/
      - maxerickson 11y ago
        The discussion of those numbers is here: https://static.mozilla.com/moco/en-US/pdf/Mozilla_Audited_Financials_2013.pdf https://static.mozilla.com/moco/en-US/pdf/Mozilla_Audited_Fi... It isn't hugely informative, but I would guess that the $9 million in office leases mentioned towards the end is categorized as an administrative cost.
  - FooBarWidget 11y ago
    What did they do with it? Have you looked at the insane amount of engineering they have done in the past 8 years? Their Javascript engine is among the fastest in the world. An insane amount of money has been pumped into hiring world-class experts to develop it. Not to mention the continuous improvements to their rendering engine, marketing and awareness projects, charity projects to get minorities like kids and women into web development, fighting legal battles against patent encumbered technologies like H264, etc. You are seriously underestimating the amount of money they need.
    - mahouse 11y ago
      > Their Javascript engine is among the fastest in the world. And still easily the slowest.
      - epmatsw 11y ago
        Oh really? http://arewefastyet.com/ http://arewefastyet.com/
        mahouse 11y ago
        Yes, really. Benchmarks are fabricated and hardly represent real use cases, such as modifying the DOM.
        fabrice_d 11y ago
        DOM modification performance has next to nothing to do with the performance of the JS engine.
nautical 11y ago
Do you have ideas on how else to continue development process ?
elorant 11y ago
Well you know the saying. When something is free, you're the product. Personally I don't mind. I love Firefox and the work they've done all these years and if that's the only way to keep them afloat then so be it. I just hope the implementation won't be too intrusive.
- pserwylo 11y ago
  Not always. If something is free, and it is a commercial company offering it, then you are probably the product. But if the offering is from a not for profit company, a charity, or volunteers building something open source for their enjoyment and to contribute to the community, then you are not the product. As for Mozilla, I'll leave you to make up your mind. I tend to agree with you and I love Mozilla too (but hope that Iceweasel doesn't have this :)
- hiamnew 11y ago
  There is a whole cosmos of FLOSS software that utterly destroys that argument.
  - FooBarWidget 11y ago
    As an open source developer myself, I say that you are way too optimistic about it. With a few exceptions, open source projects tend to be consistently underfunded. I get the feeling the HN crowd doesn't realize/appreciate/care about this fact. Let's take a look at two contrasting open source projects: Ruby and the V8 Javascript interpreter. Ruby is dog slow in comparison to V8. They both languages are extremely dynamic and present similar optimization challenges. Why? Because Google has enough cash to hire world-class experts to make V8 fing fast. One of the guys behind V8 has 20 years of experience with writing JITs for dynamic languages. The guy practically invited JITs for dynamic languages, and was also one of the main contributors of the Hotspot JVM JIT. In contrast, Ruby does not. I met up with a panel of Ruby core developers a couple of months ago. It became extremely clear that Ruby is underfunded. Ruby has maybe 2 full time paid developers. They are skilled, but are nowhere near as skilled as the V8 guy when it comes to optimizing dynamic languages. They also lack funding for infrastructure projects. Web browsers are one of the most complex pieces of software in human history. Mozilla literally spends millions per year on developing Firefox. Sure, a browser might exist in a completely free, lowly-funded FOSS form. But at what expense? Just look at Ruby vs V8. You can't just hand-wave away the importance of money.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
icebraining 11y ago
The data is collected in the browser, same as it ever was. The history is not sent to Mozilla's servers - it's the browser that locally chooses and fetches the tiles. The tiles are grouped based on multiple servers, so the fact that your browser requested a specific tile doesn't directly tell them which site you actually visited. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1120311 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1120311
- nodata 11y ago
  Mozilla has done a disastrous job of communicating this, I hope they post something soon. Their last blog entry is from 18 May: https://blog.mozilla.org/ https://blog.mozilla.org/ Edit: they have a different blog here that mentions it: https://blog.mozilla.org/futurereleases/ https://blog.mozilla.org/futurereleases/
  - AaronMT 11y ago
    Agreed. It’s posted on a /privacy/ section of the blog https://blog.mozilla.org/privacy/ https://blog.mozilla.org/privacy/
- pdkl95 11y ago
  It just leaks which category of sites I've been visits. Why is it so hard to understand that leaking any bits not necessary for the retrieval and presentation of the link I clicked on is absolutely unacceptable? Anything that sends data that could not be learned form the server logs is spyware and will be treated as such. Some companies like to claim that this spying is necessary because the data is useful. I'm sure it is, just like I'm sure a thief find the goods they stole to be useful. For similar reasons claims - like your explanation of this firefox misfeature - relating to the amount of bits leaked are not actualy a defense.

anilgulecha 11y ago

You can look at it thisway -- Firefox was funding it's own development by off-shoring it's ads to Google/Bing in exchange for funds. Maybe the world becomes better with Mozilla directly serving ads than it's partners. Of course, I'll be going with the adblocked community version which will be released, with or without Mozilla's backing.

kropotkinlives 11y ago

For once, it appears Microsoft are the only browser vendor moving in the right direction and that is scary.

FooBarWidget 11y ago
They can afford it because they have lots of cash from Windows and Office sales.
kibibu 11y ago
It's happened in the past. I still have positive memories of IE4 - at least compared to the horror of Netscape 4
- kropotkinlives 11y ago
  Fair point! I'd forgotten about Netscape 4 and eternal Bus Errors on the SPARCstation 20 I had back then :(
rockdoe 11y ago
You mean the guys that torpedoed DNT and are sabotaging WebRTC standardization?

vegancap 11y ago

They're a business, just like anyone else. Unless we all start throwing thousands of donations at them, they have to find ways to monetise to keep up the awesome work they do. If it's both relevant and intuitive, then no harm done. Remember, your browsing history isn't exactly a big secret. That's why incognito modes exist in most browsers.

melicerte 11y ago
I understand nothing is free and my privacy matters. For that reason, I'm willing to make donations, even on a regular basis, instead of having ads.
- lmorchard 11y ago
  Great, here you go! https://sendto.mozilla.org https://sendto.mozilla.org
dannypgh 11y ago
Firefox isn't a business, it's an open source/free software project. Mozilla is a nonprofit entity which pays some people to work on it. This is an important distinction, no?
- vegancap 11y ago
  Not particularly, they still have to gain some form of revenue to keep their core ventures. Their revenue in 2012 for example was $311 million.
  - vdaniuk 11y ago
    An organization being for-profit or non-profit is not particularly important distinction? Elaborate please.
    - maxerickson 11y ago
      It's literally just a tax status. Part of that is that no one owns the Mozilla Foundation, but, for example, the people controlling it can still extract money by paying themselves salary. This is how family foundations can be a tax dodge, the huge legacy is dumped into a non profit and grows without incurring much taxes, meanwhile the family has some meetings and draws comfortable salaries for it.

raziel2p 11y ago

The article says Mozilla are "doing a Google" with this, but I can't remember ever seeing this sort of thing in Chrome or Chromium.

romanovcode 11y ago

The problem is that nobody is funding Firefox and they need money to continue development. If any of you "goodbye firefox" have a better idea feel free to speak up. Also, you can leave firefox for google, but it collects way more data anyway. Maybe Microsoft Edge will be good so Windows users can just use default browser.

TheLogothete 11y ago
Isn't that integrated with MSN.com?
bad_user 11y ago
You're joking, right? Windows now phones home even with your "encryption" keys, Bing search is integrated into the start panel and you're somehow hoping that a still closed source IExplorer will better respect your privacy. My sarcasm detector must be malfunctioning.

ama729 11y ago

Who in their right mind would push such a thing? How can they think it'll will win them any user? I have no words.

FooBarWidget 11y ago
This isn't about winning users. It's about not dying. Web browsers are one of the most complicated pieces of software in human history. Skilled developers cost money, lots of money.
- sfink 11y ago
  I doubt it. I'm guessing this won't bring in significant money for a while at least, and it'll lose users in the short term. Monetizing search, as with the Google now Yahoo deal, is where the money for developers comes from. This only makes sense if the goal is to shake things up. What its chances of success there are, and how positive that outcome would be, is still an unknown in my head. But Mozilla only exists to have an impact on the Web, so it kind of makes sense. (I work for Mozilla, but have no special insight into this initiative.)

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

realusername 11y ago

I had nothing against the sponsoring in the new tab screen but this is a bit different. There is so much potential for backfire if they don't do it properly. But at the end, how is that different from Google who is also putting ads by analyzing your entire web history. The main problem is that it's quite hard to finance their business, they are trying to do new stuff in every direction to depend less on Google (new search partners, Read-it-later, Firefox OS...) but it's not an easy task.

FooBarWidget 11y ago
Apparently, it's different from Google by showing ads without selling your personal information. Firefox fetches ads without sharing your history. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1120311 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1120311
- vdaniuk 11y ago
  Google doesn't sell your personal information, it provides access to your eyeballs.
  - soylentcola 11y ago
    Yeah, I hear this a lot but I've never seen anything that suggests they sell info to any third party. If I'm wrong about this I'm definitely interested in reading about it so I can adjust my stance on it. As far as I can tell, the idea has always been the same: more relevant ads means less ads needed to make the same revenue and cost businesses less in wasted ad budget. The "old method" was to just make your ads more obnoxious and abundant since you could only compete through volume (both in the sense of "loudness" and "quantity"). Now if I open a shop in my city, I can advertise on Google. I tell Google that I want to pay for X ads and to show them to people in my city (potential customers) who have searched for similar items (more likely customers). This way I can minimize the amount of money I spend showing ads to people in other cities/countries or who aren't likely to be interested. Google can charge more for that space because it's more likely to result in a customer. Google makes more money from fewer/less obnoxious ads (no popups, flashy shit, etc). And as a web user, I don't see ads for diapers or restaurants in Wyoming because Google's algorithms have determined that I live in an east coast US city and have never searched for baby stuff. Honestly the only real issue I have with their "big data" is that it might be captured by another organization (business, "hacker", or government) and used in less benign ways than tweaking the ads in my sidebar.

cmdrfred 11y ago

I stopped using firefox about 5 years ago. Adblock + Chrome is the best browser I've ever used.

mukundmr 11y ago
That doesn't stop Google from reading your URL history.
- cmdrfred 11y ago
  I don't particularly care, If I need anonymity i use tor. P.S. Are you so sure Firefox won't be doing any tracking for 'advertising purposes'?

davout 11y ago

Bye FF

Confiks 11y ago

Maybe the more relevant page is Mozilla's own announcement, instead of some random site. See https://blog.mozilla.org/futurereleases/2015/05/21/help-test-changes-to-new-tab-in-firefox-beta/ https://blog.mozilla.org/futurereleases/2015/05/21/help-test... I think Mozilla needs to do a better job explaining why there is "no tracking involved in delivering Tiles". They now just state that, with no information on how it's implemented, and people will get scared if they don't hear specifics. I can imagine this being implemented without tracking, by simply downloading all advertisements and doing the ad selection on the client. The ad may then of course not 'phone home'. They also state that if you have Do Not Track enabled, these new tiles will be disabled "as we believe that most DNT early adopters are seeking to opt out of all advertising experiences". You can also opt out of them by using the cog at the new tab screen. Still, I don't really like this development.

icebraining 11y ago
They have information in the Bug Tracker, though it's in a more technical language. A plain version is definitively important. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1120311 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1120311
thristian 11y ago
A better blog-post to link to would be https://blog.mozilla.org/advancingcontent/2015/05/21/providing-a-valuable-platform-for-advertisers-content-publishers-and-users/ https://blog.mozilla.org/advancingcontent/2015/05/21/providi... which links to an infographic describing how user privacy is protected: https://blog.mozilla.org/advancingcontent/files/2015/05/How-data-is-protected-Infographic1.pdf https://blog.mozilla.org/advancingcontent/files/2015/05/How-... For people who don't like infographics, there's also a textual description: https://blog.mozilla.org/privacy/2015/05/21/putting-our-data-privacy-principles-into-action/ https://blog.mozilla.org/privacy/2015/05/21/putting-our-data...
- ama729 11y ago
  From your first link: > This is still one of our early steps towards our goal of improving the state of digital advertising for the Web – delivering greater transparency for advertisers, better, more relevant content experiences and, above all, greater control for Firefox users. At least one would hope they could be honest in their goal, I don't think anybody care about the state of digital advertising except marketers.

RobertoG 11y ago

Are we sure they will be collecting data? You could get personalize advertisements without collecting the data: the browser has your history, it made some kind of profiling (categorize you), and then it request advertisement for your profile.

rfk 11y ago
Indeed, the whole point of this (and all the verbiage about "respecting user privacy") is that the browser will do the analysis locally without sending history data back to Mozilla.

impostervt 11y ago

Cached page: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://www.geeksnack.com/2015/05/22/firefox-will-show-ads-based-on-your-browsing-history/ http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...

vdaniuk 11y ago

Good. Non-profits with proven track records such as Mozilla are the only entities I trust to run an ethical ad network. While I care about privacy and have ghostery, ublock and eff privacy badger installed, I'll be making an exception for Mozilla. As usual, I am disappointed with the HN hive-mind myopia regarding web ads, privacy and non-profits efforts to compete. Also, Mozilla is respecting Do Not Track setting of Firefox users: "* Note: if you set DNT=1, it is possible that you may not be receiving Suggested Tiles. You can very simply enable them on the new tab page with the cogwheel. We made the decision to opt users out of all sponsored Tiles experiences if they have DNT=1 quite early on, as we believe that most DNT early adopters are seeking to opt out of all advertising experiences. However, it’s important to understand that no tracking is involved in delivering Tiles."

belorn 11y ago

Couldn't iceweasel just change the default so the ads are not shown? It is free software and they already got experience to do changes to the code in order to change the name and icon.

binarymax 11y ago

I hate ads. I love Mozilla. I understand Mozilla needs the money. I don't mind supporting them with cash. Why not have a freemium option for folks to subscribe to Firefox and hide the ads?

icebraining 11y ago
You have. Disable the feature (yes, it's easy to disable) and donate.
- binarymax 11y ago
  I do donate :) My point is show a message that says 'Subscribe to hide these ads' or something similar. The process you describe is not ideal for most uses who might not even know they can donate. Remove the friction.
  - RobAley 11y ago
    A more trustworth statement would be "Click here to turn these ads off. These ads help support Firefox development, if you would like to support development by donating click here".
kozukumi 11y ago
Freemium wouldn't work. There will be unofficial builds available with this kind of stuff removed available for free within hours of the official release. They could charge for services such as sync but again that is going to be difficult Chrome does it for free. I think Mozilla need to seriously look at how they are spending their money as it seems to be pretty insane some of their outgoings. I know they are trying to diverge from just being a browser with things like Firefox OS but we all know that isn't going to ever be a real competitor to iOS and Android. Even in developing nations I think people are more likely to go with a dirt cheap Windows Phone when Windows 10 is out over a Firefox phone. One thing Windows Phone does really well is run great on very low powered devices. I can't ever see Firefox OS getting above 0.x market share. Perhaps Mozilla is just too big now? Do they need to scale back to save money? Can they survive on a donations alone?

kozukumi 11y ago

Sigh. I was worried this would happen. I know Mozilla need to make money and with their market share shrinking that is getting harder but these kind of "features" put me off wanting to use Firefox all together. I would rather use Chromium over a version of Firefox with targeted advertising built in. For now at least it looks like being able to disable it is still possible but I cannot find any mention if disabling this also disables the whole analysing my history bit?

icebraining 11y ago
There's no real analysis of your history, it's just selecting the top visited links (using existing code, which is used to show you the current tiles of visited sites).

nnrocks 11y ago

Finally, I got someone who is respecting privacy instead of moneybag.

octatoan 11y ago

I think we need a Firefox Edge similar to what happened with ABP.

mmcru 11y ago

what a terrible change. i've spent the last week developing two firefox addons; now i regret that, because i'll never use a browser with embedded advertising.

sfink 11y ago
Ok, then turn off the embedded advertising. Your users are going to continue seeing ads all over the web no matter what browser they use, and in fact will be tracked by advertisers (less so if they take steps to avoid it, but that's up to them.)

learnstats2 11y ago

Is there a project to make a decent browser that doesn't have any intention of making a profit or selling out its users, and has governance appropriate to make that a reality? It seems like this is necessary. If I can contribute to that, pre-existing or not, I will start today. There are 3 billion web users: between us we must have enough altruism and skill to compete with this.

icebraining 11y ago
I'm pretty sure the browsers by suckless won't ever show ads; not sure if you consider them decent, though. http://surf.suckless.org/ http://surf.suckless.org/

hsivonen 11y ago

Relevant: http://ed.agadak.net/2015/04/whys-and-hows-of-suggested-tiles http://ed.agadak.net/2015/04/whys-and-hows-of-suggested-tile... Key quote: "to summarize, Firefox makes generic encrypted cookieless requests to get enough data to decide locally in Firefox whether content should be added to the new tab page."

uzero 11y ago

It's not about where the processing happens or what data is actually transmitted, it's about them pulling this type of shit without clearly asking my permission. And it's not an excuse that Google and others are doing similar things. If you try to win users by publicly saying you're "fighting for privacy", you will be held against higher standards. Mozilla failed really badly here and honestly I'm not sure if they can ever win back my trust after this. Even though I've read through the tech docs released and I know it's not like they are sending your history all over, it's the way they decided to do this that undermined all their efforts so far.

RobAley 11y ago
Could you be more specific about the particular aspects of the "way they decided to do this" that you are objecting to? As a privacy advocate, I can't see anything particuarly objectionable in their methodology.

oliv__ 11y ago

...and I'm done with Firefox.

lmorchard 11y ago

FWIW, I work at Mozilla, but I don't work on this particular project. But, I care because I <3 the web. What I think a lot of folks are missing here is that this is an attempt to change how ads are done. Whether you like it or not, ads are how most of the web gets funded right now. Yes, funding Mozilla would be nice. Even better would be if ads on the web in general were less intrusive and better respected privacy. One of the things this does not do is send your browsing history to remote servers. Instead, the remote server sends you a pile of ads roughly based on your location & language. The browser decides locally what to show. That's a big change, shifting the bulk of the sensitive stuff to your own computer instead of black boxes in the cloud. This isn't just your usual "slap a banner on it" ad network used in all the free mobile apps. And, if the model works in the browser, it might work on the web too.

_up 11y ago
Why not go further and give the money earned with ads in firefox to the user. Who can then use this to directly buy webservices. This could also automaticly be brokered by the browser. This could make webservices a comodity and give back power to the user.

digitalzombie 11y ago

I'm okay with this. I love firefox and was the first few when netscape open Mozilla and I jumped on board and ditch IE5. So far I trust Mozilla more so than Google or Microsoft on browser software.

TheLoneWolfling 11y ago

And FF forks will gain traction, and so the cycle continues. I personally switched over to Pale Moon when the whole UI "update" happened, and it's looking more and more as though I made the right choice.

visarga 11y ago

Bad idea. I hate even the website icons from the new tab page. They sometimes show sites I don't want to advertise (xxx). They make "new tab" work slower and I never feel inclined to click on them. Now they are trying to stuff even more slowness inducing ads in the new tab - that means - exactly the moment you wan to to something ELSE. That's the problem - when you open a tab, you don't really want to see the ads. When you search on Google, you might want to see the ads.